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Comparison Among Bus Bar Conductors Made of Different Materials 2013-10-17

Our life and work all involve the application of electricity. The electricity consumption increased with the number of electrical devices used in households, electrical equipment in industrial sectors, etc. The increased electricity consumption requires the electricity transmission equipment to guarantee safety. Then, the bus bar is used and replaced the traditional cables for its advantages in heat dissipation, reducing energy or power loss consumed by the electrical circuit in the form of conductive heat. The bus bar has been used in many fields, especially factories with the large scale production.

Actually, what makes the bus bar advantageous in electricity transmission is conductor that is made of different materials. The bus bar, for the use of different conductor materials, includes copper busbars, aluminum bus bar, CCA busbar. The bus bar material determines the difference in conductive performance of the bus bar. Besides, the different conductor materials mean difference in manufacturing cost, safety guarantee, etc. Then, let's have a look at the different bus bar materials.

One of the basic conductor materials applied for manufacturing bus bar is copper. The bus bar made of copper has very excellent electricity conductivity, and this has much to do with the conductive feature of copper. Actually, at the beginning, the copper price was much lower and the bus bar made of copper was rather affordable and widely applied. Later, with the price of copper getting increased, the bus bar niche field reduces the application of copper. Nevertheless, the copper bus bar owns very reliable and excellent mechanical properties, being durable, corrosion resistant, and efficiently electricity conductive, it is more preferred in the application that has very high requirement of electricity transmission.

The second commonly used material for making bus bar is aluminum. Compared with copper, aluminum is much affordable in price yet its electricity conductive is not that excellent. But, for improving the electricity conductivity, the aluminum bus bar manufacturers just choose to use aluminum in larger volume as the conductor; in this way, the size of the aluminum bus bar is much larger. But, the aluminum is much lightweight, the whole aluminum bus bar, though in large size will not be much heavier with the increased volume of aluminum.

Since bus bar made of aluminum can easily get corroded and have relatively low electricity conductivity, the bus bar manufacturers turn to another material - CCA or copper clad aluminum. This kind of material just avoids the poor conductivity of the aluminum as well as the high cost of copper. The CCA busbar is made, with a thin layer of copper being coated onto the aluminum bus bar. The price of the CCA busbar is higher than aluminum bus bar, yet much lower than that of copper bus bar. Meanwhile, its conductivity, though poor than the copper bus bar, is superior to that of aluminum bus bar. The copper-clad aluminum is the most widely applied material for manufacturing the bus bar.

Generally, materials used for making bus bar include aluminum, copper and CCA. The bus bar made of different materials differs mainly in electricity conductivity and cost.